


i am lost at sea, i am a shipwreck in a storm

by anotherdirtycomputer



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Awesome Frigga (Marvel), Brotherly Love, Canon Genderfluid Character, Canon Trans Character, Depression, Gen, Genderfluid Character, Genderfluid Loki, Loki Sees a Therapist, Mental Illness, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mother-Son Relationship, No Incest, Odin (Marvel)'s Good Parenting, Sibling Love, Thor (Marvel) is a Good Bro, Trans Character, frigga loves her baby, she/her pronouns for loki, short fic, vent fic, weird metaphors for mental illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 05:43:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13474875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherdirtycomputer/pseuds/anotherdirtycomputer
Summary: Her lungs are full of water and she yet breathes.





	i am lost at sea, i am a shipwreck in a storm

**Author's Note:**

> i was feeling yuck so i wrote vent fic about it instead of doing anything bad (i recommend it)... hmu @transboythor on tumblr if you have any loki & thor related requests!

It was happening again. Those big dark moments she had come to dread were rarer now, with the palace healers aware of it, with her more aware of it, but they still came like cruel, unfamiliar storm clouds, here to rain and rain and rain and wash her away.

She should be used to it by now.

The worst part of it all is thinking it should all be better now. Father knows and sets his heavy hand on her shoulder and says the wrong words in the right ways. He loves her, in his way. Her brother knows, too, and holds her tightly, saying the right words in all the wrong ways, making her laugh and poke him hard in the ribs and call him an ass. He protests every time.

He’s not here right now. The smile the memory summoned falls and all over again, she is adrift amidst the flood.

It’s just her upon the water, alone, just Loki and the big dark storm clouds that Thor didn’t bring, that no man has willed, that have just come to bring the hurricane over Loki to tear at her very soul and leave horrible wounds in the most terrifying parts of her. The horizon on every side is dark and endless. There is no shore to swim to.

She’s supposed to be better now.

The healers tell her that the healing of the mind is not linear, that treatment is more wise than rushing headlong towards a cure that may not exist, especially for a fire of the mind like her affliction. She may never be truly whole, they tell her, using different, kinder words. The fire burns too quick, too hot, too cruel. Even the sea and big wet sky cannot put it out.

She only wants to be whole.

The missing parts of her are filled with rainfall, leaving her tired and waterlogged, struggling to breathe through lungs that face no physical affliction.

She wants to be _whole_.

Mother takes her hands when she feels this way, guides them towards that pull of magic that between them is shared. The threads that create them, that hold them together and push them apart; they know Loki and Loki knows them. Loki knows the fragile fabrics of the world and the worlds beyond Asgard, though she’s never been. She tells the healer they’ve assigned to her this, the one she sees once a week, after swordsplay with Thor and before magic lessons with Mother. She tells them that magic makes sense and makes other things make sense, too, everything but her cruel mind and the strange hurricane and the wildfires that it clashes against. Magic cannot make sense of the sea which does not exist.

They tell her that magic is a good tool. Not many tell her that.

They tell her that magic can be a balm, if she needs it, a worthy distraction from that empty place inside of her, and usually it works, if she can catch it first, if she can win and stay on the shore and land, where only the fire burns and Thor’s gentle rains and Mother’s soothing spells can hold her safe and herself, but the rainfall was too quick this time. The hurricane came and she couldn’t stop it. It washed her away to see and flooded so quickly she could not swim to land. She could only drown. She could only drown.

Magic tugs at her fingers and she tugs back, but she’s not strong enough to change the will of the matter around her, her face pressed into the only pillow left on her bed. The rest are on the floor, or against the wall, slumped, and one is even stuck in the door with a knife going through it. She doesn’t look at it, for the embarrassment. It was rage first, a cruel storm, before it became a flood. The hurricane came and she became it, like always.

Her healer -- a kind man with large arms and long hair -- became nervous when she told him that. He hid it well, but Loki had always been interested in storytelling, in the craft of creating lies. It was all in the eyes, she knew now. If you can make your eyes lie, too, then you’ll never be caught. He hadn’t learned that yet. His eyes were alarmed and he wrote something down too quickly.

She didn’t always like him.

She liked him less now. He didn’t _fix_ her. But that was a silly thought, almost as silly as stabbing one’s favorite pillow in a fit of anger. She knew that.

Magic tugged at her fingers, still, and she wished desperately there was mind magic powerful enough to heal the chemistry of the mind, the shapes and electricity that made her a sinking ship in a dark sea. She let go, then, letting the tug snap back with a bitter puff of laughter, feeling the universe slink back easily as it was meant to be, as it always is, and stood with great difficulty to go find Thor. Maybe if she bullied him enough, he’d shock her mind right, hit her with a big strike of lightning that would turn her into the perfect child that he was. She smiled at that, too, more genuinely. Or, at the very least, he could convince her to eat, and she wouldn’t feel like a little glass bottle at the bottom of the ocean, far, far away.

She thinks briefly that the healer might be proud of her when she brings this up at their next meeting.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are a norse god's best friends!


End file.
